In Part I, I dealt with the introduction and transition of Gerard Alexander's WaPo commissioned editorial, "Why are liberals so condescending". In Part 2 and Part 3 I dealt with the first two of the four liberal narratives Alexander cites as manifestations of so-called "liberal condescension." This diary deals with the third such narrative.
If Alexander's second narrative has a germ of truth to it, he more than makes up for that with his third purported liberal narrative of condescension: conservative exploitation of racial prejudice. It should be obvious that overt racism of the kind that was commonplace until the 60s and 70s is no longer socially acceptable in most places, and plays a relatively insignificant role in mainstream politics. But that hardly means that race no longer matters, or that more subtle forms of racial politics are not powerfully at work. One can see this quite clearly in the composition of the two parties, as measured by Gallup in June of last year ("Republican Base Heavily White, Conservative, Religious"):
With figure like these--a Republican base that's 89% white--it boggles the mind to hear anyone pretend that race has no impact on politics. Examples of racial messages in political campaigns are both abundant and notorious, as well. But above all, for the purpose of refuting contrary claims by conservatives such as Alexander, we have the testimony of one of the GOP's most influential party operatives, Lee Atwater. From Wikipedia:
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Atwater on the Southern Strategy
As a member of the Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an anonymous interview to Political Scientist Alexander P. Lamis. Part of this interview was printed in Lamis' book The Two-Party South, then reprinted in Southern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater's name revealed. Bob Herbert reported on the interview in the October 6, 2005 edition of the New York Times. Atwater talked about the GOP's Southern Strategy and Ronald Reagan's version of it:
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.
Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"-that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me-because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."[7]
It's perfectly normal that Alexander should call it sinister when liberals draw attention to this. Nothing mobilizes the forces of projection with quite the same ferocity as racism, since racism itself is largely a matter of projection-or more precisely, the related, but more primitive process of projective identification, as indicated by phychotherpist Robert Young, in a passage I've quoted a couple of times before, from "Racism: Projective Identification And Cultural Processes":
I think that the price of admission into a culture is the acquiring of its projective identifications (Young, 1992). That is why racism is historically and culturally contingent. It is quite specific in its utilisation of scapegoating and stereotyping. To understand a particular form of racism is to bring together psychoanalytic understanding with social, cultural and economic history - quite precisely.
With that in mind, let's turn to what Alexander had to say:
The third version of liberal condescension points to something more sinister. In his 2008 book, "Nixonland," progressive writer Rick Perlstein argued that Richard Nixon created an enduring Republican strategy of mobilizing the ethnic and other resentments of some Americans against others. Similarly, in their 1992 book, "Chain Reaction," Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall argued that Nixon and Reagan talked up crime control, low taxes and welfare reform to cloak racial animus and help make it mainstream. It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants.
Note that Alexander doesn't dispute anything that Perlstein or the Edsalls wrote. Instead, he's setting up a "that was then, this is now" defense. But, of course, that very defense is itself part of the new set of mechanisms employed by colorblind racism today-it's a classic form of minimization, one of the four core frameworks of colorblind racism, as delineated by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva in his book Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, and described in my static (reference) diary "Colorblind Racism" :
Minimization of racism is a frame that suggests discrimination is no longer a central factor affecting minorities' life chances ("It's better now than in the past" or "There is discrimination, but there are plenty of jobs out there).
And here he goes:
Race doubtless played a significant role in the shift of Deep South whites to the Republican Party during and after the 1960s. But the liberal narrative has gone essentially unchanged since then -- recall former president Carter's recent assertion that opposition to Obama reflects racism-- even though survey research has shown a dramatic decline in prejudiced attitudes among white Americans in the intervening decades. Moreover, the candidates and agendas of both parties demonstrate an unfortunate willingness to play on prejudices, whether based on race, region, class, income, or other factors.
But was Carter's statement proof that "the liberal narrative has gone essentially unchanged since then"?
It certainly didn't look that way at the time, when it was openly observed that Carter's special status allowed him to say what virtually no one else could, and still be taken seriously. What's more, President Obama himself felt compelled to quickly reject what Carter said, and any sort of sensible discussion that might have taken place was instantly undercut.
Indeed, the very article that the Post linked to had this to say in its third and fourth paragraphs:
But at the White House, the official line is: Race issue? What race issue?
"I'm not sure I see this large national conversation going on right now," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday. He said Obama "does not believe that that criticism comes based on the color of his skin," attributing it instead to honest policy disagreements.
Yes, of course, a majority of the Republican base either thinks he was born in Kenya or isn't sure because of ' honest policy disagreements'. Right.
The fact is that liberals know things have changed in some ways, but not in others. They just generally lack a framework for understanding more precisely how this works. But they certainly know it still matters. Let's run those numbers from the Dkos/R2000 poll of GOP voters again, shall we? From Part 1 in this series:
Among other things, the poll showed that 79% of Republicans thought either President Obama was a socialist (63%), or they weren't sure (16%); 58% of Republicans thought that either President Obama was either foreign-born (36%), or they weren't sure (22%); 76% believed that either ACORN stole the 2008 election (21%), or they weren't sure (55%); 64% of Republicans thought that either Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people (31%), or they weren't sure (33%); 57% of Republicans thought that either Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win (24%) , or they weren't sure (33%); and 68% of Republicans thought that either Barack Obama should be impeached (39%), or they weren't sure (29%).
And there's nothing racial in all that? Pu-leeze!
Carter's statement was an invitation to have a discussion that could, among other things, shed some light on the subject of how racism persists even as the old more overt forms have faded. But racism is still too strong--and Obama too weak--to allow that to happen. So long as things remain this way, it's a net plus for conservatives, who can use their updated racial manipulations and attack liberals as Alexander does for not being able to nail them for the up-to-date methods they use.
Finally, Alexander's last word on the subject provides yet another example of colorblind racism in the form of minimalization:
Moreover, the candidates and agendas of both parties demonstrate an unfortunate willingness to play on prejudices, whether based on race, region, class, income, or other factors.
Ah, yes! Racism today is really no different than regional prejudices. It's those damn Yankees, again, hatin' on good ole Southern boys who never did no one no harm no how. |
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